Construction of an urban-type settlement intended to house a large high energy physics research laboratory started in 1958, and the RosAtomInstitute for High Energy Physics was opened here in 1965. The institute is known for the 70 GeV proton accelerator which was the largest in the world at the time it was launched in 1967, and other physics research. Town status was granted in 1989. The UNK Collider was the last big planned particle accelerator.
It is worth mentioning a few discoveries made at IHEP, among them the discovery of antihelium and Serpukhov cross-section effect.
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